People familiar with Machine Learning and AI in general understand the underlying mechanics of how AI chat works. But to many non-techies, it can seem fantastic, magical, even eerie with their converstational abilities and responses blurring the lines between humans and machines. In this quick and simple converstation log, folks who are mystified with AI, […]
Tag: STEM
Password strength and cracking
In our digital age, the importance of having strong, secure passwords cannot be overstated. With cyber threats on the rise, ensuring that our online accounts are protected is more crucial than ever. In this blog post, I share the core mechanics of measuring a password strength and share a practical approach to estimate how long […]
The classic “Two Trains” problem with interactive solution
You may have heard of the classic puzzle: Two trains start from two towns, heading towards each other. One train leaves Town A heading towards Town B at some speed while at the same time, the other train leaves Town B heading towards Town A at another speed. If the distance between the two towns […]
Creating a Fishbone Diagram Like a Pro in Excel
In this post I walk you through all the steps needed to create an amazing Fishbone diagram in Excel, without having to manually draw or paint anything. The steps presented here can be used to create any Fishbone diagram suited for your specific situation. What is a Fishbone Diagram? A fishbone diagram is a commonly […]
Creating a data-driven, dynamic cause-and-effect chart
In this post, I share my method of creating a chart to show how events impact another variable such as sales and prices in a data-driven, easy-to-read, and dynamic way. Think of it as a cause-and-effect visualization. Let’s look at an example scenario where this type of chart can be very useful. This is done […]
Getting reading time of an online article and more
If someone sent you a link to page or article, ever wanted to know how long is the article before even opening and reading the article, or if you could get a sense of the server response time or the page load time, number of images and paragraphs in that article? Well, I did and […]
Sorting algorithms explained, compared
In this post, I discuss some common sorting algorithms, their logic, share their implementation (code), and demonstrate each one with executable scripts. Then I compare their performances to identify the most efficient sorting algorithm(s). You’ll get a good overview of each one, learn how to code and use them, and understand their strengths and weaknesses. […]
Understanding Step Charts (and creating them in Excel, Python)
Step charts are suitable for showing fluctuating or irregular values over time. There’s no built-in Step chart type in Excel, so most people use a Line chart instead, which is not really ideal or sometimes accurate (I’ll explain that below). With proper data shaping, it’s possible to create Step charts in Excel. In this post, […]
Building an at-a-glance holidays timeline
Today, I share the steps required to build an overall holiday calendar timeline in Excel. This allows you to see the entire year’s holidays with different categories (e.g. company holidays, federal, personal vacation, etc.) at a glance without requiring you to navigate month by month to see the events. All the year’s key events can […]
Prisoners of the world
In this post, I touch on a complex and touchy issue of the human society. We look at the prisoners’ population around the world for selected countries, while casting a wide net of diversity. With the data and visualizations presented, we should be able to answer: Which countries have the highest number of prisoners? Which […]